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To students Digital Education recommend that when saving their work they follow any guidance from their department. We also recommend that if they students have trouble submitting (as occasionally happens) then saving as PDF tends to work - but this may change the word count. We have guidance for students on submitting their work.
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There's no UCL-wide policy for calculating word counts, but there may be faculty-wide policies so if in doubt about local practice, do consult your own faculty's Board of Examiners.
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“Turnitin uses a word counting algorithm very similar to that of Microsoft Word. For everything except HTML, PDF, and PS file types, we rely on Microsoft Word's word count system. "
Note: Turnitin's word count does not count the words in textboxes, footnotes, and endnotes since these are not included by default. For example, if the whole paper (e.g., a form) is in a textbox, it may be rejected because the word count is too low.”
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What departments can do
At least one faculty Board of Examiners has discussed this matter formally. There was agreement that it wouldn't be feasible to have faculty-wide framework calculating word counts.
Other institutions e.g. University of Sussex urge their staff to treat the word count as indicative only, and to use their judgement. In this respect the word count is not accurate, but it may still be an advance on the judgements which used to happen with paper-based marking.
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- Whether there is a template and instructions to standardise things like margins, font style and size, &c etc. (it may be that standardised submissions are a further visual aid to markers on word count who can then estimate that x number of words is roughly y number of pages - though diagrams and images complicate the estimation).
- The format students should save their work in (again please note that only in PDF format does Turnitin count footnotes, endnotes, &cetc.).
- Whether the word count should be based on the Turnitin value (and how to check) or the original word-processed value.
- If the word count isn't based on the Turnitin value, then whether students should include a statement of the word count.
- Whether the word count should include words in textboxes, footnotes and endnotes (it often will - otherwise there is an incentive for students to display text into these elements to exclude them from the word count), and some guidance about how to configure the word count to include them.
- (As a deterrent) that That it is possible for markers to download original work to check the word count.
Departments should also direct markers' attention to guidance provided to students.
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If this doesn't meet your needs
Consider using Moodle Assignment. Since student work opens in its original format, there won't be a discrepancy between the original and uploaded work.
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